Home
by damnitjillkatherine
Summary: It takes eight months, but Tony finally gets Stark Tower repaired and modified.


**Home  
**Disclaimer: All belongs to Marvel. Le sigh.  
Rating: PG  
Summary: It takes eight months, but Tony finally gets Stark Tower repaired and modified.

* * *

It takes eight months, but Tony finally gets Stark Tower repaired and modified. The penthouse suit is still reserved for him, and Pepper when she's in New York. Tony has to tweak the suit-removing apparatus for the new Mark VII, and he decides to spring for extra thick bulletproof glass in the windows. Being thrown through plate glass is not an experience he ever wants to repeat. Tony's taste in décor is pretty spare, mostly because he spends too much time in the workshop to be bothered with interior design, but Pepper gradually makes the place look lived-in with artwork, cozy throw pillows, and occasionally clothing strewn about in strange places.

Since he figures the two of them will be spending a lot of time together doing science stuff, Tony gives Bruce the floor below his. Dr. Banner has his own small lab in his section, which Tony tends to wander into, unannounced, at strange hours of the night. At first, Bruce is worried about living in New York, in a building with all the other Avengers and their various noisy habits, but Tony assures him that his floor is one hundred percent soundproof. And it is. It's the quietest place Bruce has ever been in his life. When Thor blows out the windows on the level below him, he doesn't even feel the floor shake. Bruce drapes colorful Indian fabrics across his ceilings and uses them for curtains, so his space is always bathed in warm light. Tony wires JARVIS into the lab so that he can access him while he's in there, but Bruce often finds himself carrying on conversations with the AI. He likes JARVIS's soothing tone of voice and the fact that he has all of Tony's sarcasm without any of his flightiness. Bruce likes Tony, he really does - he's the only one who doesn't walk on eggshells around him - but trying to keep up with his rapid changes in focus is simply exhausting.

Thor's section of the tower is relatively simple. It's full of dark, heavy wood furniture and shiny metal decorations. Somehow - even Bruce can't figure out how - he brings a bed back from Asgard that could easily sleep five people, and Tony suspects it does when Lady Sif and the Warriors Three come to visit. They're inseparable. They're also usually rip-roaring drunk, since Tony installed a wine "cellar" in Thor's kitchen. He can't decide whether that was the best or worst decision he's ever made. Thor is a ridiculously happy drunk, but he's also a ridiculously _strong _happy drunk, and he manages to put several fist-shaped dents in the industrial-strength stainless steel kitchen countertop. He's always on his best behavior, however, when Jane comes over. The rest of the team finds it hilarious to see him go from drunken frat boy to perfect gentleman.

Down from the demigod's floor is what Thor calls the Great Hall and everyone else calls the Pit, in reference to the usual state of disaster it's in. A state-of-the-art kitchen, giant overstuffed couches, an obscenely large flat-screen TV, and a boxing ring are always available to all of the Avengers and the SHIELD agents they actually like. At first, it's only used by Tony and Clint, who play never-ending rounds of violent video games, shouting and shoving at each other like twelve-year-olds. Gradually, the others trickle in and become comfortable in the space. Steve watches the video games with fascination, amazed at how far animation has come since the 1940s. Natasha watches them with mild disgust and then kicks both of their asses at Call of Duty. Thor figures out how to use the kitchen appliances and decides that his new friends should be treated to a feast worthy of Asgard at least once a week. He's _really _dangerous once he figures out the espresso maker. Bruce tends to wander in early in the morning when he's most likely to find Steve and Natasha having coffee and the rest of the team snoring on the couch. About three months after everyone's moved in, Tony decides that Steve needs to be caught up on the cinematic history of the last seventy years, and movie nights become a regular thing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Pepper even teaches Steve how to dance.

Below the Pit is Clint's floor. While every Avenger's section has huge windows that open wide in case they need to make a quick exit, the master archer's window is special. It faces what was once an office building that Tony bought and emptied out so that Clint could use it for target practice. Seventy percent of the windows have bulls-eyes in them, and they're all full of arrows. Clint's rooms are simple and homey. His favorite gaming chair is the deep, squishy salad-bowl chair (there's another one in the Pit), and he loves the loft bed Steve helped him build. Tony offered to draw up some plans and have JARVIS manufacture something, but Steve jumped at the chance to build something with his own hands, with tools that haven't changed in seventy years. Clint's pantry is always stocked with junk food, which Natasha teases him about mercilessly.

Natasha's floor is below Clint's. She's the only one who takes advantage of Tony's offer to hire interior decorators for everyone. The whole space is very dark and sophisticated, with lots of red and black and low lighting. She has a humongous black marble Jacuzzi bathtub that's perfect for soaking away the aches and pains of training and fighting. Six months after moving in, she thanks Tony for giving her a tub big enough for two, but no matter how hard he pries and how many times he threatens to install cameras, she won't tell him who she's been sharing it with. The only thing in Natasha's space that would give a visitor any insight into her personality is the collection of matroyshka dolls lined up along the kitchen counter. Sure, they're Russian, but she mainly likes them because she appreciates the idea of many layers within a single person. The only time anyone cooks in her kitchen is when Clint slips in at three in the morning, eyes bloodshot from a fresh nightmare, and she makes him grilled cheese and tomato soup.

Walking in to Steve's section is like stepping back in time, and it's mostly Tony's doing. He protests at first but quickly finds out that when Tony Stark sets his mind to something, nothing short of the apocalypse - or a _very _angry Pepper - can change it. Tony manages to find a whole kitchen worth of vintage appliances from the 1940s and either tinkers with them until they're new again or rips out their guts and replaces them with modern parts, still preserving the original look of the piece. Steve has a phonograph that sounds perfect, no matter how scratched the records are, and a television console with a high-definition flat screen in place of the old tube set. He isn't completely stuck in the past. He embraces the mp3 player - "You mean I can take all of this music _with _me, no matter where I go?" - and the electric toothbrush. He likes the fact that he can order pretty much any food he wants and have it delivered to the tower. Sometimes going out into modern New York City is just too overwhelming for him. He likes having his own workout room, too. Things get a little awkward in the SHIELD gym when both Natasha and Clint refuse to stop staring at him. Also, Tony assures him that the supply room three floors down will always be stocked with punching bags.

The level below Steve's is technically the guest floor, but it gradually and unofficially become's Phil's. The Avengers still haven't forgiven Fury for lying about the man's death, and for a while they were angry with Agent Coulson as well. But once they find out that he was in a coma through the whole Loki ordeal and had no idea how the Director was using him, they welcome Phil to the tower like one of the team. Technically, he lives at SHEILD headquarters, but he spends at least half of his week at Stark Tower. Turns out he makes a mean spaghetti, and he threatens to taze Tony when he gets nosy in the kitchen. The furnishing on the guest floor is very spare, since Phil isn't there often enough to care about decorating, but there is a Captain America poster pinned to a wall in the kitchen. He doesn't tell anyone about it, but one day he comes in and discovers a signature in the lower right-hand corner. Agent Hill visits occasionally to bitch about Fury over coffee with Phil and spar with Natasha in the Pit while Clint, Tony, and even Steve drool a little bit.

Fury sees the Pit once and calls them all children. Phil claims he's the world's only superhero babysitter and constantly reminds the Director that he's not getting paid enough for this shit. Pepper despairs over the whole place every time she visits, tries to clean up the Pit for about twenty minutes, then gets frustrated and goes out with Natasha for very expensive martinis. On Tony's dime, of course. Tony convinces Steve and Thor to have a drinking contest. Steve insists that he can't get drunk because of his super-soldier metabolism, but Thor merely laughs and hands him a bottle of Asgardian mead. The look of sheer disbelief on the demigod's face in the moment before he passes out is completely worth the hangover Steve experiences the next day. Clint develops a habit of perching on tall pieces of furniture, and Bruce almost Hulks out one morning when he hears "Howdy!" from the top of the refrigerator. For a while, Tony is unsure about the whole Avenger-commune thing, and he keeps buying expensive things for the rest of the team, hoping they won't leave, until Steve pulls him aside in the Pit's kitchen one day and gently tells him to stop. "It's working, Tony," he says. "We like it here. And we like you." "You'd be dead by now if we didn't," Natasha offers helpfully. Both the men jump. They hadn't heard her come in, even with Steve's enhanced hearing. Tony is a little afraid of her.

It's unconventional and sometimes uncomfortable, literally living on top of one another. Slowly but surely, though it becomes home.


End file.
